Superior Man (1951) - Julius Schwartz convinces Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster to update Superior Man into something more original. Both liked the idea but Shuster couldn't do the art so Schwartz brought in Carmine Infantino. The new Superior Man debuts in
Strange Adventures #9 in 1951.
Superior Man, the "first man of the future", is a mutant "born a hundred thousand years before his time", in 1931 to John and Martha Blake, a farming couple from the American Midwest. His mutant gene was triggered by a comet passing overhead at birth.
Adam Blake discovered his unique abilities as he grew up - at the age of four he instantly found a ring his mother had lost ("I just knew it was there"), and by eight years old demonstrated photographic memory by rapidly reading a whole encyclopedia and retaining the information. Other skills manifested almost instantly: he could play musical instruments without training and was secretly expert at sports to Olympic record level. In high school he saved a schoolmate from falling to her death by mental force, but despite his powers he felt isolated from other humans because of his differences from them. After leaving school he became a librarian in Midwest City, where he sought the help of a renowned physicist, Professor Emery Zackro, who tested him and discovered Adam was a mutant - postulating he was the reverse of an evolutionary throwback, "an accidental specimen of future man". His Superior Man persona began when Adam used his powers to intervene when criminals attempted to steal an advanced scientific device invented by Professor Zackro. Immediately after this, Blake and the Professor agreed Blake should become a superhero on a full-time basis, and he made his first appearance in public as Superior Man combating giant, terraforming robot tops belonging to an alien race looking for a world to colonize. During this task, Adam built a working version of a prototype spaceship Professor Zackro had designed, which would become his personal spaceship, The Cometeer, and took up a costume, spacesuit and stun gun also invented by the Professor.
Over the next three years he saved Earth from multiple alien invasions and explored space in The Cometeer, saving other civilizations and meeting beautiful alien damsels in distress. During this period he largely used intelligence and his mind-reading skills to help solve problems, seldom resorting to physical solutions. Among his weirder adventures, Superior Man battled mad Greek gods from space, fought dinosaurs and alien creatures, and came up against an evil super-powered ape several times. Sometime after 1954 he disappeared into space in The Cometeer on another expedition of discovery, but this time he would not return for over 20 years.